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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 17391
[Religious]
Date Posted:
3/2/2007
4:39:50 pm EST
Wvox Stats
Views: 7,070
RSS: 20,343
Comments: 11
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Leaving Our Religions?
Author: Craig Young Source: GayNZ.com
Title: LEAVING OUR RELIGIONS?
According to the Lavender Islands religion question, "New Zealand lesbian, gay and bisexual Christians quit mainstream religion at two-and-half times the rate of the general population" The report suggests that Christian denominations and sects are a major turnoff, and to keep sane and alive, people leave their denomination of origin. They've concluded that if those denominations don't want them, no great loss - they don't need to be Christian either.
Of the 2269 participants in the survey, 73 per cent said they were raised as Christians, with 22.5 per cent not raised in any religion. But only 15 per cent of raised Christians were currently practicing their religion, while 73 per cent of the gay, lesbian and bisexual participants were currently non-religious.
We can't generalise about the other great faiths, as Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and "other" religions accounted for only a small percentage of responses. However, the sums referred to above- "seventy three per cent raised Christian and fifteen per cent who are currently Christian... is a remarkable eighty per cent decline", Hendrickson said.
And we're not alone.
Submitted by and Thanks to: Ian
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Community Thoughts: There are 11 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| They Can See Their Problem In A Mirror. | Mar 3rd. at 9:02:55 pm EST
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me
In the words of Scrooge, "I haven't taken leave of my senses, I've come to them."
That is the way I felt when I finally dumped the religion I'd been living in and found my freedom as a Pagan.
Besides a great many didn't actually leave- they were cast out- then castigated for leaving- when they were actually just supposed to change and deny themselves to suit the congregation's narrow views.
Besides, ostracizing and excommunication doesn't really work anymore when those that are can find better welcome elsewhere. And that- they find upsetting since they can no longer inflict punishment for those forced into exile either by their own choice-or by pressure.
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| What's Natural? | Mar 3rd. at 12:05:57 am EST
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arinna (Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina) - Email Me
So let me see if I get this right. If God created hermaphrodites with the genitalia of both sexes are they automatically homosexual no matter who they love? Obviously they didn't choose to have both sets of genitalia but no matter which sex they choose to love, they will be loving someone with a set of genitalia they also share.
What if you are a straight person and you fall in love with a hermaphrodite, would that make you half gay? And would it still be a sin?
Surely God wouldn't have meant for them to have sex only with other hermaphrodites because that would make them twice as gay as gay people, wouldn't it? It's all so confusing.
And why would Jehova create people so physically confused and never mention them at all in the Bible nor provide any rules for who they can and can't have sex with when He took such great pains to limit the sex life of everyone else?
Unless.... the whole Christian obsession with sexual prohibitions is a sham and God never really cared as much about which dangly bits are on the outside as S/He does about what's in a person's heart.
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| Well, Duh | Mar 2nd. at 10:13:55 pm EST
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Bookworm (Saint Paul, Minnesota) - Email Me
The dominant idea among most Christian sects in the past has been that homosexuality one of the most repulsive sins a person can commit. Fully accepting churches are pretty recent innovations. For some denominations, like my own birth religion (Catholic) , it has been a hard, painful road to liberalize to the point of saying “Okay your existence isn’t a sin, but your sex acts still are, so stay celibate for life.” Then there are those denominations and sects for which there is no hope in sight.
Being a lesbian wasn’t the only or even the primary reason that I left the Church as a teenager, but it doesn’t surprise me that most queer people do leave traditional Christianity. To stay in a religion that condemns you for who you love you have to do one of two things -- give up that part of your life and swallow the loss, or try to reconcile how you live with what your religion teaches without going insane. I respect people who make the difficult choice to stay, but I think it would start to eat away at a person’s sense of personal integrity after a while.
I do wish they had found more about people of non-Christian religions. It might have been interesting.
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| Leaving Nothing Worth Regretting... | Mar 2nd. at 9:32:44 pm EST
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me
Frankly, I can't blame them. Why stay where one isn't wanted when there are other religions that are far more open and welcoming?
Leave it to them to wonder why nobody stays, when they are the ones who drive them away in the first place.
I left my own religion long ago because women don't seem to have any rights in it. At least none that really matter. And considering they way they are trying to run things-- walking away from it was the best thing I ever did.
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| NZ | Mar 2nd. at 7:36:01 pm EST
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WitchPoet (Claremont, California) - Email Me - Web
NZ always sunded very interesting. They seem to do things their wn way and usually pretty mellow in result no matter the rhetoric before. A sane society?
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| How Lovely... | Mar 2nd. at 7:17:05 pm EST
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Moro NightBird (Carbondale, Illinois) - Email Me
"....and the people's eyes were opened and they saw that they clothed in the most hideous garb. and they disrobed and began to look for a more timeless and beautiful garb, and while they were naked, they were not ashamed, except in the presence of other's who retained the hideous garb, for the garb was so hideous that it stung their eyes and made them ill. and in the search for a timeless garb and medicines for the illness, they came across a healer and witch-doctor, and begged a drought and a cover, which were given to them. and they did all drink and dress and were well."
How funny is that? See, I used biblical yadayada 'holier that thou' speech and made a humorous piece that sounds like it came from the bible, but didn't really. The 'hideous garb' as you may have guessed, is a metaphore for xianity, which the people are shedding, and the 'search for a more timeless garb', is the search for, you guessed it, Paganism!!
"Timeless and beautiful, one size fits most. If your head is swollen with stupid ideas, it probably won't fit, but try it on any way, this fabric doesn't rip or anything, it's ENCHANTED!! We've got lot's of different patterns and styles, find the one that suits you! The price is timeless, too: FREE!! Come on down today to "Find good clothes stores" found on the Planet Earth!"
That's funny too. I did it like an advertisement, see?
Yeah, New Zealanders taking off thier "Clothes" doesn't surprise me. But when the weather gets cold, they know what to do. 1-Move to warmer weather 2-Put the old clothes back on 3- put on a timeless piece of clothing on and laugh with the rest of us.
Life is so funny sometimes!!
~Moro NightBird~
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| I'M NOT.... | Mar 2nd. at 6:04:11 pm EST
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Whitewolf (Schenectady, New York) - Email Me
lesbian or bisexual, but it's the xtian attitude toward women that drove me away from it, not that it had a strong grip on me to begin with (thankfully....) But I am not less than a man, and a man is not less than me. That's one of the things that brought me to Paganism. Equality. Xtianity still has a lot of issues to deal with, and it's going to continue to lose people, especially women, if it doesn't change.
Love to all
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| This Is The Bit I Liked | Mar 2nd. at 5:37:21 pm EST
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Ian Edwards (Portsmouth, England) - Email Me
"Church membership is no longer associated with social status; in fact, it seems de rigeur that to be fundamentalist, one has to hate anyone with a higher education and proudly boast that "ooo-arrr, they not be one of them intellectuals." Even the Maxim Institute admitted that seventy percent of fundamentalists that get to university lose their faith when faced with intellectual challenges."
Or, as I put it when I was last approached by a Christian fundie recruiter:
"I'm very happy that you found a path right for you. However I preferr one that allows me to think"
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